Sunday, September 30, 2012

As an exhibition on the Jews of Algeria opens in Paris to mark the 50th anniversary of their exodus when Algeria acquired its independence from France, Elder of Ziyon has found this astonishing diary entry by one Signor Pananti - reminding us of how things were for the Jews in 1818 before the French invasion:

"The unhappy sons of Israel, so badly treated in other countries, can
expect little indulgence from the barbarians ; consequently there is no species of outrage or vexation to which they are not exposed. They are prohibited from writing or speaking Arabic, to prevent their being able to read the divine Koran. They cannot ride on horseback,
but are obliged to go on mules and asses ; the first being too noble an
animal for them. When passing a mosque, they are obliged to go
bare-footed. They dare not approach a well or fountain, if there be a Moor drinking there ; or sit down opposite a Mahometan. Their clothing Is obliged to be black ; which colour is held in contempt by the Moors.
The Jewish women are only permitted to veil a part of their features.
The indolent Moor, with a pipe in his mouth and his legs crossed, calls
any Jew who is passing, and makes him perform the offices of a servant. Others amuse themselves by smearing
the hands, visage, hair, and clothes of the Jewish boys, with paint or
mud ; while the Turkish soldiers often enter their houses, insulting the
females, without the heads of the family having the privilege of desiring them to retire.

"It is the business of Jews to execute all criminals, and afterwards bury their bodies. They are also employed to carry the Moors on their shoulders, when disembarking in shoal water.
They feed the animals of the seraglio, and are incessantly exposed to
the scoffings and derision of the young Moors, without the possibility
of resenting it. Frequently beaten by their persecutors, if they lift a hand in their own defence, agreeable to the lex talionis of the Moors, it is taken off.

"But that which is still more irksome, is the never ending contributions
levied on them : the weekly sum of two thousand dollars is exacted as a
general tax upon the whole tribe, besides various other individual
assessments, particularly whenever any Moorish festival takes place.
The Turks insist on borrowing money even by force ; and contrary to the
European maxim, it is not he who forgets to pay, that is incarcerated,
but the man who refuses to lend! A Jew cannot leave the regency without giving security to a large amount for his return.
If any of the sect become bankrupts, and there happens to be a Turkish
creditor, he is almost invariably accused of fraudulency and hung.
Woe to those, who attempt to complain on such occasions : which is no
trifling aggravation of their sufferings. There was once an imposition
laid on fountains; upon which a poet wrote the following address: " You
are loaded with imposts like us; but more happy than we — you are at
least allowed to murmur."

"It is, however, astonishing with what stoical fortitude all this is
borne by the followers of Abraham ; many of whom, underan appearance of
the greatest poverty, accumulate large fortunes. " It is true," said a
Jew, on my asking how he could remain in a country, where he suffered so
many vexations; " we suffer a great deal; but then what money we
make!!"

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Maikel Nabil spent 10 months in an Egyptian jail last year (photo: The New Yorker)

The brave Coptic blogger, human rights campaigner and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil, writing in the Times of Israel, sees a common thread linking the sorry plight of Copts - 75 percent of whom have emigrated in the last 60 years - with the ethnic cleansing of Egyptian Jews. But Copts themselves have not always been as sympathetic as Nabil - and even took advantage of the 1956 exodus to take over Jewish property at knock-down prices ( as one commenter points out) :

After the Egyptian military took power in the
country 1952, it started its campaign against Egyptian Jews, launching
its propaganda against Jews in all the state-owned media. It freed all
the terrorists who had committed violence against Jews before the coup,
and jailed liberals and seculars instead. It encouraged aggression
toward the Egyptian Jewish minority, which led to new terrorist attacks
against Jewish individuals and properties in Egypt.

Between 1954 and 1956, 80,000 Egyptian Jews
were expelled from Egypt, but not before they were robbed of their
property. After that, Egypt revoked their citizenship, forbidding them
from returning to their homeland. Of course, before they left, Egyptian
authorities forced them to sign papers saying that they had been treatedfairly
and were leaving of their own will. There are currently around 300 Jews
living in Egypt, isolated in an environment that is hostile to them.*

The Christian minority in Egypt (known as
Copts) reacted in a very selfish way at the time, choosing not to
interfere in the crisis so as to avoid any harm. They thought that if
they took the side of the dictatorship, they would be safe. Obviously,
it didn’t work.

After the Egyptian military expelled Jews and
outlawed Bahais and Shias, they started their campaign against
Christians. The Egyptian regime has maintained since that time a very
fundamental understanding of Islam, and forced it through the media and
the education system. Violent attacks against Christians became
increasingly frequent, and most of the time no one was prosecuted.

The Egyptian regime created an uncomfortable
situation for Christians in order to force them to leave the country.
And the evidence shows that it worked. Some 4 million Egyptian Christians have
emigrated from Egypt over the last 60 years, representing one-third of
the entire Coptic population, and comprising nearly 75% of Egyptians
living abroad.

But Egyptian authorities are not satisfied
with that. After Mohammed Morsi acceded to power, he decided to speed up
this process. The Egyptian regime used the film “Innocence of Muslims”
to start a huge propaganda campaign against Egyptian Christians. And of
course, Christians in Egypt are becoming increasingly isolated under
this propaganda. Violence against Christians occurs every day, and the
state usually takes the side of the Muslim murderers.

Friday, September 28, 2012

The BBC has broken its 64 years of virtual silence on the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, although, this being the BBC, it takes scrupulous care to give equal weight to the 'plight' of Palestinian refugees (who moved all of 19 miles from Ramle to Ramallah) and their claims. This must be hailed as a victory of sorts for Danny Ayalon's campaign to push the issue of Jewish refugees on the international stage.

At the edge of Mahane
Yehuda market in Jerusalem, elderly men sit playing backgammon - or
shesh besh as it is known locally - wearing looks of intense
concentration.

It is a scene which can be found in coffee shops across the
Middle East, such as in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. In fact many of
the men here are Jewish Israelis who originally came from those Arab
countries.

"We stayed in Baghdad until 1951, when we moved to Israel,"
Vardika Shabo says. "They hated the Jews in Iraq. They killed many of
us in 1948. They took our belongings and burned our houses."
"We left with nothing except our suitcases. No money. We left the house, my parents' shops. Everything that we had, we left."

Another man, Baruch Cohen, left Qamishli in North-Eastern
Syria in 1963. He tells me he was 13 when his father led a group of 97
Jews out of the area. They left secretly to avoid unwanted attention
and were helped across the border into Turkey.

From there safe passage to his new home was arranged by the
Jewish Agency, a government body which brought Jews from the Diaspora to
live in Israel.

"We were persecuted. The regime was very cruel to the Syrian
Jews," says Mr Cohen. "We escaped with just the clothes on our backs.
It was like the exodus from Egypt in the Bible. We lost our lands and
came here as refugees."

Vardika Shabo came from Iraq over 60 years ago

According to Israeli government figures, 856,000 Jews fled Arab
countries in four years after the state was created in 1948. Officials
say they lost billions of dollars' worth of property and assets.

A new government campaign aims to raise awareness of their
plight. More controversially it aims to equate it with that of the
hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in
Israel. It insists that both cases are part of the same core issue that
must be addressed by any future peace talks.

"The problem of refugees is probably the most thorny and
painful one. Everyone agrees without solving this we won't be able to
achieve true peace nor normalisation in the Middle East," says Deputy
Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

"We have to, ahead of time, understand that refugees are not
only on one side of the border but both sides. There are Arab refugees
and there are also Jewish refugees and we should use the same yardstick
for them all."

Mr Ayalon spoke at the first special conference on the issue
at the UN headquarters in New York last week. He suggests that an
international fund could be set up to deliver compensation for both sets
of individuals.

'I am a Refugee': Palestinian leaders though are angry at the "I am a Refugee"
campaign, which they see as an Israeli attempt to create a new obstacle
for any future peace efforts.

"This is not an issue in the
negotiations that we agreed on with them - they include Palestinian
refugees, Jerusalem, borders, settlements, water and security," says
chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

"They continue loading issues to the overloaded wagon of complexities in order not to have a solution."

He suggests Israel's timing is designed to coincide with the
latest plans to ask for the UN General Assembly to admit Palestine as a
non-member state. This will enable the Palestinian leadership to pursue
Israel through the international courts.

"These people are destroying the two-state solution and that
is why we are going to the UN in order to preserve it," Mr Erekat says.

The refugee issue has proved so difficult that it was put off
by the two sides to be tackled as part of any eventual final status
discussions under the Oslo Accords in 1993.

It has been a key Palestinian grievance since 1948.
Palestinians argue that their "right to return" is enshrined in UN
resolution 194 passed that year, which states that "the refugees wishing
to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should
be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date".

Israel says that such a move would obliterate the country's Jewish majority.
While Jews from Arab countries are now naturalised citizens of
Israel, many Palestinian refugees remain in camps; most are in the West
Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
At al-Jalazun refugee camp on a rocky hillside near Ramallah
in the West Bank, 86-year-old Ahmed Safi lives with his family in a
small, overcrowded house. His grandchildren have just arrived home from
the local school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Um Hazem holds up the keys she says belonged to her original home in present-day Israel.

"We had a huge house in Beit Nabala in Ramla [in present-day
Israel]," Mr Safi says. "All the family lived there. Our life was very
nice. We had work and a good income, but when we left we couldn't take
anything with us because we were scared and we left in a hurry."

His wife, Umm Hazem jangles some large keys, which she sees as symbols of her right to return.
"You see these? I grabbed them from the cupboard and took
them with me. I couldn't take anything else as I had my new baby in my
arms," she says.

Some 200,000 Jewish refugees were housed in tent camps or 'maabarot' on arrival in Israel in the 1950s. (Photo: Israel at the UN)

Zvi Gabay, a former Israeli ambassador and deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, has been a tireless advocate for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Only by granting justice to all refugees can any hope of peace come to the Middle East, he argues in The Huffington Post. (This is an English version of an article Gabay first published in Haaretz, entitled The Jewish Nakba) :

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon's initiative in opening the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab states to public debate
has met, as expected, with angry Arab reactions. One of the reactions
was the accusation that the issue is an "invention." The reason for
these reactions is that this issue has up to now been unknown.
Successive Israeli governments ignored it and the media neglected it. It
was treated with contempt, amidst the concern that raising it would
awaken Palestinian claims and harm the peace process. So the world
became accustomed to relating only to the Palestinian nakba that
resulted in 650,000 refugees, according to UNWRA, the U.N. agency
created specifically to deal with these refugees.

The Arab governments are careful to perpetuate the misery of the
Palestinian refugees, not allowing them to be rehabilitated or to become
citizens in their countries, due to the ideology that maintains that
rehabilitating the Palestinians would be to Israel's advantage. The Arab
leaders have repeatedly placed full responsibility for the creation of
the Palestinian refugee problem on Israel. At the same time, Israel
never made a serious effort to exonerate itself of this accusation, even
though U.N. Resolution 194 from 1948 did not hold Israel responsible for the problem.

Another claim made by the Arabs is that the Jews were not forced to flee
from the Arab states, where they lived in peace and harmony. Here, a
history lesson of the conflict would be in order. They would discover
that, during the U.N. debates in 1947 about the proposal to partition
Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, their representatives
(Heykal Pasha from Egypt, Dr. Fadhil Jamali from Iraq and Jamal
al-Husayni, head of the Palestinian Arab delegation, and others) not
only declared
that "the partition line will be a line of fire and blood;" they also
announced that partitioning Palestine would put the Jewish communities
in the Arab states in mortal danger. Immediately after the 29 of
November -- the day that the partition plan passed -- the Arab armies
and the Palestinian Arab gangs attacked the Jewish community (the
Yishuv) in Palestine and, simultaneously, rioted against the Jews in the
Arab countries.

The war started by the Arabs led to killing, destruction and terrible
human tragedy. Eight hundred and fifty-six thousand defenseless Jews fled to Israel
and other countries, leaving behind their personal and communal
property and assets, while six hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians
abandoned their firing positions and their homes and went to Arab
countries. In effect, a population exchange occurred between the State
of Israel and the Arab countries, similar to the population exchange
that occurred between India and Pakistan. However, the Arab states,
following the instructions of the Arab League, refuse to recognize this
situation and prevent the humane resolution of the problem that they
created.

Despite the fact that the human dimensions of the catastrophe suffered
by the Jews from Arab countries were greater than the dimensions of the
catastrophe suffered by the Palestinians, the world's attention has
always focused on the latter. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in
1957 did indeed recognize the Jews from Arab countries as refugees, but
the U.N. General Assembly did not pass a single resolution on their
behalf. In contrast, it has passed more than 160 resolutions and
declarations in support of the Palestinian refugees. This one-sided
approach has not solved the problem and has exacerbated the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It could be that the Jewish refugees were ignored because the Jews from
the Arab countries rehabilitated themselves in Israel and in other
countries and the conditions of their life in the camps became a thing
of the past. All of the U.N. resolutions and the billions of dollars
donated to the Palestinian refugees by the international community have
not improved their situation and they continue to live in appalling
conditions.

The time has come for the Arab states to acknowledge the reality created
by their war on Israel and to stop toying with the possibility of
turning back history, stop reciting the slogan "right of return" for the
Palestinian refugees and stop sowing illusions in their hearts.

A solution to the tragedy of the refugees in the Middle East --
Palestinians and Jews -- can only be found by looking at the total
picture. Any solution must be shared by the Arab states, Israel and the
international community. It must be based on President Clinton's
proposal in 2000, to establish an international fund to compensate
Palestinian and Jewish refugees.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

What will happen to Alexandria's priceless Jewish heritage now that the community is almost extinct? An international committee should take it over, but when is the right time to start talking to the new regime - and will they even answer? Anna Sheinman investigates for the Jewish Chronicle:

Ben Youssef Gaon is the last Jewish man in Alexandria. As the
president of the Jewish community in the city, he controls huge swathes
of property, including synagogues, cemeteries and commercial and
residential properties, all administered by a large team of Egyptians. A
campaign is under way to stop the property, much of it donated by Jews
fleeing after the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, going to the Egyptian state
when he retires.

In 1937, Egypt's second city had a Jewish community of 25,000. Now it
has only one functioning place of worship. The imposing Eliahou Hanavi
Synagogue on Nebi Daniel Street had only two men at the erev Rosh
Hashanah service this year, Mr Gaon and an American embassy employee. In
previous years, a minyan from Israel made the trip for the High Holy
Days, but diplomatic relations have deteriorated following Egypt's
revolution, and some sources say the group were refused visas.
Stored in the synagogue are many precious sifrei Torah. The community
also holds genealogical records and other valuable religious and
cultural material, all of which may soon go to the Egyptian state.

A former cantor at Eliahou Hanavi, 81-year-old Geoffrey Hanson, whose
visa to visit Egypt has been refused for the past five years for
reasons unknown to him, is on a mission to protect the property, which
he estimates as worth 100 million euros.

Mr Hanson, who now lives in Israel, suggests a solution: "A group of
[ex-pat] Alexandrian Jews must come together and say they will run the
community after Mr Gaon."

Roger Bilboul, president of the Paris-based Nebi Daniel Association,
which acts to preserve Jewish cultural and genealogical heritage in
Egypt, is broadly in agreement. "The idea of creating an international
committee which can take over is something we have put to the
government, but we have never had a response."

Bureaucratic stumbling blocks have increased following the
revolution, but Mr Bilboul is optimistic. "We need to start knocking on
doors, establishing a relationship with the new people in power. We are
hoping to start by the end of this year."

But the situation in Alexandria currently is "very, very dangerous,"
says Desiré Sakkal, director of the Historical Society of Jews from
Egypt, which is based in New York. This week, there was a fire on Nebi
Daniel Street, in which book kiosks were burned, showing the level of
anti-cultural feeling in the city. Although he supports the plan in
principle, to act now would be "pure madness," Mr Sakkal said.

Mr Gaon has himself come in for criticism. His rival for the
presidency, Victor Balassiano, wrote an article for the Historical
Society accusing Mr Gaon of seizing power and changing the locks on the
synagogue while Mr Balassiano was on holiday.

He is also alleged to have converted to Islam, something required on
marriage to a Muslim woman in Egypt. However, Roger Bilboul asserts that
Mr Gaon is now divorced, and has documentation affirming his Jewish
faith.

Additionally, Mr Sakkal said: "Mr Gaon is [allegedly] an appointee of
the Egyptian state, so you have to be very suspicious". Ben Youssef
Gaon himself was not available for comment.

Adding his considerable weight to the campaign for Jewish refugees, leading lawyer Alan Dershowitz (pictured) has been writing in Haaretz: therehe challenges Hanan Ashrawi, and others who dispute that Jews in Arab countries were indeed refugees, to a public debate. When Dershowitz sneezes, the mainstream media rushes in to write about it. But apart from an article in The Washington Times, the US press and media, says the watchdog CAMERA (see link below), have been curiously silent about Israel's historic UN meeting on Jewish refugees on 21 September.(With thanks: Lily)

Historical evidence conclusively establishes that the forced exile of
Jews from Arab countries was part of a general plan to punish Jews in
retaliation for the establishment of Israel. There were organized
pogroms against Jewish citizens. Jewish leaders were hanged. Jewish
synagogues were torched. Jewish bank accounts and other property were
confiscated. Jews remained in Arab lands at risk to their lives.

Yet Hanan Ashrawi and others dispute the applicability of the label of “refugee”
to these Jews. Their argument is that since they are not seeking a
right to return to their native lands, they do not qualify as refugees.
Under that benighted definition, Jews who escaped from Germany and
Poland in the early 1940s would not have been considered refugees, since
they had no interest in returning to Berlin or Oświęcim.

In
1967, the United Nations’ Security Council took a different view of this
matter. I know, because I worked with Justice Arthur Goldberg, who was
then the permanent representative of the United States to the United
Nations, on the wording of Security Council Resolution 242, on which the
Middle East peace process has long relied. That resolution dealt with
the refugee problem. The Soviet Union introduced a draft which would
have limited the definition of refugee to Palestinian refugees. The
United States, speaking through Justice Goldberg, insisted that
attention must be paid to Jewish refugees as well. The American view
prevailed and the resulting language referred to a “just settlement of
the refugee problem.” Justice Goldberg explained: “The Resolution
addresses the objective of ‘achieving a just settlement of the refugee
problem.’ This language presumably refers to both Arab and Jewish
refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a
result of the several wars.”

Accordingly, the Jewish and Arab
refugees have equal status under international law. There is now
pending in Congress H.R. 6242, a law which would grant Jewish refugees
from Arab countries equal status under American law.
The time has now come, indeed it is long overdue, for these refugee
problems to be granted equal status in the court of public opinion, and
in the realm of morality.

If Hanan Ashrawi really believes
that Jews who were forced to leave their homes are not refugees, let her
defend her views in a public forum. I hereby challenge her to a debate
on that issue.

If there are those who doubt the historical
accuracy of the Jewish refugee narrative, let an international
commission of objective historians take testimony from living refugees.
Indeed, it would be useful for an archive now to be created of such
testimonies, since many of those who were forced to flee from Arab lands
are now aging.

There are some who argue that the issue of
Jewish refugees is a makeweight being put forward by cynical Israeli
politicians to blunt the impact of the Palestinian refugee narrative.
But this is not a new issue. I and many others have long been concerned
about this issue. Since 1967, I have consulted with Iranian, Iraqi,
Egyptian and Libyan families who lost everything—life, property and
their original homeland—as the result of a concerted effort by Arab and
Muslim governments. What is cynical is any attempt to deflect attention
from the real injustices that were suffered, and continue to be
suffered, by hundreds of thousands of Jews and their families just
because they were Jews who were born in Arab lands.

On September 21, 2012, Israel hosted an event at the United Nations
highlighting the stories of Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries
in the last century. What? You thought all refugees in the Arab-Israeli
conflict were Palestinian Arabs? Nope.

The event, "Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries,"
featured firsthand accounts from Jewish refugees, along with remarks by
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Israel's UN Ambassador
Ron Prosor, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and Harvard
Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. Normally, when Alan Dershowitz sneezes,
there's an article in the press. He's been mentioned in The New York Times on literally thousands of occasions.

But, when Israel tries to tell the story of the 850,000 Jews living
in Arab countries who were dispossessed and forced out between 1947 and
1972, there is virtual media silence.

While CAMERA has covered the story of Jewish refugees from Arab countries extensively (see here, here, here, and here), few major media outlets cover the issue and fewer covered the symposium. There was an article in The Washington Times but, other than that, only Jewish and Israeli media covered the meeting.

The French edition of the Huffington Post is becoming a debating ground over the Jewish refugee issue. In the red corner we have Larry Derfner, who has had to brush up his francais - perhaps because the English edition was getting already quite congested on this topic. Derfner is pitched against Israeli lawyer Johann Habib, who was actually responding to Hanan Ashrawi on the English Huffpost. Confusing, isn't it? (With thanks for her translation: Sylvia)

In sum, "dear Goyim, don't take pity on the Palestinian refugees until you have shed a few tears for us, for Israel, for our Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who are worth more than those wretched Palestinian refugees who whine while not caring a fig for their suffering hosts.

What impresses me most is that the Israeli leadership don't even realise how much they are embarrassing the Goyim by forcing them to watch their miserable circus. They don't even realise that they are giving Israel the worst name by comparing Mizrahi Jews (they still call them so today) who were expelled from their homes in 1948 to Palestinian refugees who today are still in search of a refuge.

What an astonishing column published in the English version of the Huffington Post by Hanan Ashrawi, the distinguished representative of the PLO (Palestine Liberation organization)!

Let’s remind ourselves that she denies hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries the right to define themselves as refugees, just because they have rejoined their ancestral homeland. She affirms, in a way, that they must choose: either Israel is their homeland and therefore they are not refugees, or they are really refugees and can return to those countries, with, in the backdrop, the de-legitimization of Israel as the Jewish State and the charge of cynical use of the refugee concept.
The vehement objections on the form and the faulty arguments on the substance highlight the unenviable position of a PLO in disarray, undermined by corruption and whose credibility among its population has been damaged. Furthermore, they reveal the Palestinian Authority’s fears that those it is supposed to represent are no longer the sole victims of the post-war Middle-East, a point that it has exploited for several decades.

Hamas betrays more Arab alarm as it lashes out at Israel over 'Arab Jews', decrying the meeting in the UN building on Friday to raise the Jewish refugee issue. Hamas reverses historical facts to suggest that 'Arab Jews' displaced Palestinians before expelling them. In fact the great MENA Jewish exodus took place after most Arab refugees had left. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Hamas on Saturday denounced the Israeli call to recognize the suffering of
Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their material claims – the same way it
acknowledges the plight of displaced Palestinians, the Ma’an News Agency
reported on Sunday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Ambassador to
the UN Ron Prosor and World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder presented
the recently launched diplomatic campaign to raise the issue of Jewish refugees,
in a special gathering at the UN before Israeli officials, foreign diplomats,
activists and journalists last Friday.

Following the gathering Hamas
spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement that, “those Jews are criminals
rather than refugees.”

He added that, “Those Jews were not refugees as
they claim. They were actually responsible for the displacement of the
Palestinian people after they secretly migrated from Arab countries to Palestine
before they expelled the Palestinians from their lands to build a Jewish state
at their expense.”
Zuhri said it was the fault of the Jewish refugees
from Arab lands who “turned the Palestinian people into refugees,” Ma’an
reported.

Commenting on the conference, he said: “The Hamas movement
views this conference as a dangerous, unprecedented move which contributes to
the falsification of history and reversing of facts.”

Palestinian
politicians like Hanan Ashrawi have argued that Jews from Arab lands are not
refugees at all and that, either way, Israel is using their claims as a
counter-balance to those of Palestinian refugees against it.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Prior to the UN meeting on 21 SeptemberDanny Ayalon addressing a Jerusalem conference on Jewish refugees on 10 September (Photo: Oren Nachshon)

It was a historic moment at the UN, but it will be the first of many occasions when Israel will raise the issue of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon appealed to the UN to hear and document the stories of brutally expelled Jews; Referring to the issue's potential for achieving peace, UN Ambassador Ron Prosor said 'this is not about the past, it's about the future'; Ron Lauder of the WJC said peace had to be based on truth; law professor Alan Dershowitz said that Jewish refugees had one of the strongest claims to be refugees while Palestinians had one of the weakest. Dan Diker of the World Jewish Congress stated that Jews were card-carrying members of the Middle East, and one of its oldest peoples - an argument not stated enough. Before a comprehensive list of links to the press coverage of the UN event, here's an extract from Jonathan Tobin's intelligent analysis on the Commentary blog (with thanks to all those who emailed me with links):

The tragic fate of Palestinian Arab refugees has always loomed over
the Middle East conflict. The descendants of those who fled the
territory of the newborn state of Israel in 1948 have been kept
stateless and dependent on United Nations charity rather than being
absorbed into other Arab countries so as to perpetuate the war to
extinguish the Jewish state.

The refugees and those who purport to
advocate for their interests have consistently sought to veto any peace
plans that might end the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.
They have refused to accept any outcome that did not involve their
“return” to what is now Israel, an idea that is tantamount to the
destruction of Israel. The Palestinians have gotten away with this
irresponsible behavior because they retained the sympathy of a world
that saw them as the sole victims of Israel’s War of Independence. But
the historical truth is far more complex.

Far from 1948 being a case of a one-sided population flight in which
Palestinians left what is now Israel (something that most did
voluntarily as they sought to escape the war or because they feared what
would happen to them in a Jewish majority state), what actually
occurred was a population exchange. At the same time that hundreds of
thousands of Arabs left the Palestine Mandate, hundreds of thousands of
Jews living in the Arab and Muslim world began to be pushed out of their
homes. The story of the Jewish refugees has rarely been told in
international forums or the mainstream media but it got a boost today
when the first United Nations Conference on Jews expelled from Arab
Countries was held at the world body’s New York headquarters. While
Palestinian refugees deserve sympathy and perhaps some compensation in
any agreement that would finally end the conflict, so, too, do the
descendants of the Jews who lost their homes. As Danny Ayalon, Israel’s
Deputy Foreign Minister rightly said today:

We will not arrive at peace without solving the refugee
problem – but that includes the Jewish refugees. Justice does not lie on
just one side and equal measures must be applied to both.

It is true that the descendants of the Jewish refugees are not still
living in camps waiting for new homes. Though the process was not
without its problems, rather than abuse those Jews who were dispossessed
and using them as political props as the Arabs did, refugees from the
Arab world found homes and lives in Israel and the West with the help of
their brethren. But that does not diminish their right to compensation
or a fair hearing for their grievances.

The truth about the Jewish refugees is something that foreign
cheerleaders for the Palestinians as well as the Arab nations who took
part in the expulsion have never acknowledged, let alone refuted. As Ron
Prosor, Israel’s UN ambassador, pointed out in his speech at the
conference, what occurred after Israel’s birth was nothing less than a
campaign aimed at eliminating ancient Jewish communities. Arab leaders
“launched a war of terror, incitement, and expulsion to decimate and
destroy their Jewish communities. Their effort was systematic. It was
deliberate. It was planned.”

Indeed, not only did Jews lose billions of dollars in property but
were deprived of property that amounts to a land mass that is five times
the size of the state of Israel. This is something that a lot of people, especially those to whom the
peace process with the Palestinians has become an end unto itself don’t
want to hear about. They believe that the putting forward of Jewish
claims from 1948 is merely an obstacle to negotiations. But such
arguments are absurd. Peace cannot be built merely by appeasing the
Palestinian claim to sole victimhood. Just as the dispute over territory
is one between two peoples with claims, so, too is the question of
refugee compensation. Peace cannot be bought by pretending that only
Palestinians suffered or that only Arabs have rights. Indeed, such a
formulation is a guarantee that the struggle will continue indefinitely
since the Palestinians are encouraged to think that they are the only
ones with just claims.

For far too long the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has
been cast as one pitting the security of the former against the rights
of the latter. Framed this way, it is no surprise that the more
emotional appeals of the Palestinians have often prevailed over the
arguments of Israelis. Rather than asserting their historic rights, the
Jews have often allowed themselves to be cast in the false role of
colonial oppressor. The Palestinian pose as the only victims of the war
enables them to evade their historic responsibility for both the
creation of a refugee problem in 1948 as well as their refusal to accept
Israeli peace offers.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Danny Ayalon's campign for Jewish refugee rights has put the cat among the pigeons, writes Lyn Julius in the Times of Israel. The Arab press and leftwing media are in disarray. But a bigger challenge might be the mass ignorance of the issue among Israeli Jews. (Full coverage of the UN meeting on 21 September will begin shortly.)

Last week’s “Justice for Jews from Arab Countries“ conference in Jerusalem, staged by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MFA) in association with the World Jewish Congress (WJC), made
history: it was the first official attempt in 64 years to introduce the
plight of 850,000 Jewish refugees into mainstream public discourse. On
September 21, the scene shifts to New York, when Danny Ayalon, WJC
President Ron Lauder and leading lawyer Alan Dershowitz will call for UN
recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Reactions so far in the mainstream media range from bewilderment to hysteria. The campaign is a “cynical manipulation.” It’s about talking points, political point-scoring, “hasbara.”

In other words, the involvement of the Israeli MFA has raised the media’s worst suspicions. Haaretz and The Daily Telegraph
report that the Israeli government is obeying a recommendation of the
Israeli National Security Council. It’s a premeditated strategy. It’s a
stumbling block to peace, proof of the Israeli government’s
‘insincerity’, an excuse to avoid a peace settlement even when peace
talks are not going on. (Naturally, perpetuating Palestinian refugee
status down through the generations is not political. And the Palestinian insistence on their “right of return” to Israel is not a stumbling block to peace. )

The Jewish refugees campaign has
been referred to as a tactic intended to deflect attention from Israel’s
African refugees crisis, according to Shayna Zamkanei, or divert public opinion from Israeli “discrimination” against Sephardim, according to Sigal Samuel.
(You know, discrimination is that thing which makes every Sephardi girl
reach for her hair-straightening tongs in order to look like her
Ashkenazi friends.)

Much Arab criticism has claimed that Jews from
Arab countries were not refugees at all. If they were, they would
assert a “right of return” of their own to their countries of birth.
Since they are now in their homeland of Israel, their aspirations have
been fulfilled (Radical Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy has now jumped on this bandwagon). Blogger Petra Marquardt-Bigman calls this vain attempt to “dezionize” Israel an own goal: Ironically, Hanan Ashrawi’s logic is a ringing endorsement of Zionism for the 650,000 Jews who did resettle in Israel.

For Hussein Ibish (ably challenged by Ben Cohen), the
very fact that the Jews are not asking for a “right of return” makes
their campaign for justice “hollow.” They have no substantive claims, he
alleges – barring a desire to delegitimise the Palestinian “right of
return.”

According to Canadian refugee rights lawyer David Matas, however, you can’t bothclaim
to be a refugee and assert a ”right of return.” “The very assertion of a
‘right of return’ is an acknowledgement that the conditions which led
to refugee status no longer hold sway,” he told last week’s conference.
Needless to say, the conditions in almost all Arab countries remain as
hostile and unsafe for Jews – if not more so — as on the day they fled.

What the Jewish refugee issue does is to
remove a stumbling block to peace by pricking the bubble of Palestinian
exceptionalism. If one set of refugees from the conflict has been shown
to have been absorbed without fuss, what does it say about the other?

Others on the Israeli left have objected to
the linkage of the two sets of refugees. One Almog Behar, a young
Israeli-born poet, has popped up on Facebook to speak on behalf of an unheard-of committee of
Iraqi and Kurdish Jews in Ramat Gan against “renewed Israeli government
propaganda efforts to counter Palestinian refugee rights by using the
claims of Jews who left Arab countries in the 1950s.” Clutching at
Behar’s straw, an Iraqi newspaper is now reporting that Iraqi Jews
refuse to be associated with the “file on Palestinian refugees.”(...)

I would think that Jews of Arab
origin would be outraged that their dispossession is again raised only
as a talking point against Palestinian refugees.

Well actually, Jews from Arab countries are
thrilled that their issue is finally being pushed to the fore. In much
of the sniping at Ayalon’s campaign, there is sneering contempt; not
compassion for Jewish refugees, nor appreciation for their human rights,
from people who only seem to care about Palestinian rights. Under human
rights law, Jewish refugees do have substantive claims for which there
is no statute of limitations – to remembrance, recognition and redress, a
notion that includes compensation.

The biggest obstacle to this campaign seems
not the foreign or leftist press but mind-numbing ignorance among
Israeli Jews. According to a poll released by the WJC to coincide with
the international conference, 54% of Israeli Arabs are more likely to
link Jewish refugees from Arab countries with Palestinians displaced
from Israel, compared to only 48% of Israeli Jews. Even more worrying,
96% of the Jewish population was found to have no knowledge of the
issue, compare to 89% of Israeli Arabs.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Perhaps it's because he was sick of having his Haaretz article 'Hitching a ride on the magic carpet' of 2003 quoted ad nauseam that Sociology Professor Yehouda Shenhav, guru of the radical Left, has now written another piece decrying the linkage between Arab and Jewish refugees. This one appeared in ha' Oketz, a fringe publication produced by two North African Jewish professors.

Frankly, the new article is much the same as the old, although some detect a grudging acceptance of the current campaign for recognition and redress. Shenhav still maintains that Israel has responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba (a controversial view) and fails to see that Jews from Arab countries could be refugees as well as Zionists. Why the collection of testimonies from Jewish refugees would reduce Palestinian testimonies of the isolated instances of expulsion and looting is beyond comprehension. Shenhav never comes to grips with the chief difference between the two groups: scapegoated Jewish non-combatants versus Palestinians caught up in, and some actively abetting, a war of genocidal aggression. To fail to see the difference is moral blindness of the first order. Point of No Return is indebted to Sylvia for translating this article from Hebrew.

Calls to
define the Jews from Arab countries as refugees have been silenced in the past
by Israeli governments. The change of policy and Danny Ayalon’s intense
activity are related to the relatively new realization that Israel can no
longer evade its responsibility for the Nakba. It is, however, in the interest
of those leading the campaign to learn the history of this unrealistic proposal.

For the past
three years, we’ve witnessed an intensive campaign, the purpose of which is to
achieve political and legal recognition for Jews of Arab countriesas “refugees”. The campaign seeks to create
in the public mind an analogy between Palestinian refugees and the Mizrahis
[Oriental Jews] who came to Israel in the fifties and sixties and present both
populations as victims of the 1948 war. Israel Foreign Ministry, under the
leadership of Danny Ayalon, is intensely involved in the collection of testimonies
that will reduce (like an exercise of algebra), the Palestinian refugee
testimonies on the expulsion, the looting and killing.

Two years ago,
the Knesset passed a resolution obligating every Israeli government engaged in negotiations
with Arab representatives (meaning Palestinians) to refer to Jews of Arab
countries as refugees. Last week, the National Security Council published its
administrative work recommending to the government “to create a bond between
the Palestinian refugees and the Jews from Arab Lands”. It was Uzi Arad who
decided upon his nomination as Head of the Council to set up a special team that will consolidate the
Israeli official position on the subject of “Jewish refugees from Arab
countries”. To that end Arad received Netanyahu’s blessing. He founded a
special administrative body at the National Security Council and even invited
people from the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the Finance Ministry
to the discussions. Historians, economists, Jewish organization representatives
such as WOJAC - the World Organization for Jews of Arab Countries - and the Jewish
American Organization Justice for Jews of Arab Countries (JJAC) were invited to
those discussions as well. The Council recommended to the Prime Minister to make
“the Jewish refugees” and the compensation claim on their behalf an integral
part in negotiations on the Palestinian refugees issue.

Calls to define
the Jews of Arab countries as refugees have been silenced in the past by diverse
Israeli governments. Why then the change of policy? Among other considerations,
there is the relatively recent recognition that Israel can no longer evade its
responsibility for the Nakba. This gross ploy by the Foreign Ministry testifies
to fear of the Palestinian claim to return and compensation, a central
component of Palestinian demands. It proves that Israel recognizes that the 67
paradigm will not bring an end to the conflict due to its denial of the Nakba. With
that realization in mind the campaign leadership hopes by using the Orientals
to block the implementation of the Palestinian “right of return” and reduce the
amount of compensation that can be demanded of Israel for Palestinian assets
expropriated by the Custodian of “absentee” properties. This idea is
historically mistaken, is not politically smart, and is morally unjust as can
be determined from its biography.

An unfortunate history that should be memorialized

The campaign to recognize the Jews of Arab Countries as
refugees was in effect launched by Bill Clinton already in June 2000 in an
interview with Channel One. Ehud Barak repeatedly stated his “achievement” in
August 2000 in an interview with Dan Margalit. It is important to remember that
in the past the Israeli governments avoided coming out with a declaration on
the Jews of Arab countries as refugees. First, from fear that this kind of
declaration will bring back what Israel has tried to erase and forget: the
Palestinian claim to return. Secondly, for fear that such a declaration will
spur Jewish claims against Arab Countries and Palestinian counter-claims;
third, because Israel had then to update the history textbooks and rewrite the narrative
according to which the Oriental Jews came to Israel not because of their
Zionist yearnings but against their will. Any historian who would have made that claim
would have been called a Post-Zionist.

Those who at the time concocted the equation between
the Oriental Jews and the Palestinian refugees for Barak and Clinton were the
Prime Minister’s Adviser to Diaspora Affairs Bobi [Roni?] Bar-On with people
from his office along with representatives of organizations such as the World
Jewish Congress, the World Federation of Sephardic Jews and the Conference of
Presidents. Dr. Avi Bekker, Secretary of the Jewish Congress, and Malcolm Hoenlein,
Secretary General of the Conference of Presidents, met with Professor Irwin
Cotler, member of the Canadian Parliament and expert in international law, and
convinced him to join the campaign. The umbrella organization founded under the
name “Justice for the Jews of Arab Countries” didn’t succeed in generating
massive enthusiasm for the campaign, not even in the Jewish world. The campaign
has failed, until recently, to generate any noteworthy statements on the part
of major Israeli politicians. This isn’t surprising. This campaign has an unfortunate
history that they should do well to remember because history can be a very
practical business.

WOJAC, the World Organization for Jews of Arab
Countries, was founded in the 1970s. Igal Alon, then Foreign Minister, feared
that WOJAC would be used as a hotbed for what he dubbed “ethnic organizing”. As
already mentioned, WOJAC was not founded to help the Oriental Jews but rather
to create a deterring balance to bloc claims by the Palestinian National
movement, principally refugee claims and right of return.Allegedly, the use of the expression
“refugees” was not unreasonable, indeed the concept has become central in the
historical debate and international law after WWII. Resolution 242 of the UN
Security Council of 1967 spoke of a “just solution to the problem of refugees
in the Middle East”. In the 1970s the Arab countries demanded to mention
explicitly the Palestinian refugees, however, the US government through its
representative at the UN, Arthur Goldberg, opposed the move.

In a working paper prepared by Cyrus Vance, then
Secretary of State, in 1977, in anticipation of a potential meeting of the
Geneva Convention, it was introduced, under Israeli pressure, that a solution
to “the refugee problem” must be found, without specifying to which refugees it
is being referred.WOJAC, who tried to
popularize the concept “Jewish refugees”, has failed. In addition to the Arabs,
many Zionist Jews throughout the world opposed the initiative as well. I
recommend to the current campaign’s organizers to examine the anatomy of an
organization that has turned in the course of its activities, from Zionist to
Post-Zionist, and to learn a chapter in the theories of unexpected result of
political action.

The advocate of the concept “Jewish refugees” inside
WOJAC was Yaakov Meron, Director of the Department of Arabic Law at the Justice
Ministry.Meron redacted the equation in
the most extreme thesis on the issue of the Jews of Arab Lands. He claimed that
Jews were expelled from Arab countries in an operation coordinated with the
Palestinian leadership and called it “ethnic cleansing”. Meron harshly
criticized the Zionist Eposwhich he
claimed sprouted romantic nicknames such as “Magic carpet” or “Operation Ezra
and Nehemiah” which led to forget “the fact” that the flight of the Jews was in
fact the consequence of an “Arab policy of expulsion”. In order to complete the
analogy between the Palestinians and the Oriental Jews, the WOJAC people even claimed the Orientals lived
in the 1950s in refugee camps (read: Maabarot) just like the Palestinian
refugees. This claim gave rise to harsh reactions on the part of the
Integrating institutions who called it “treason”.

The arguments of the Organization shocked many
Mizrahim who defined themselves as Zionists. In 1975, immediately after WOJAC
was founded, Israel Yeshayahu, then Chairman of the Knesset, clarified: ”We are
not refugees. We also came to this country before the founding of the state...
We had Messianic yearnings....” Shlomo Hillel, a Minister in the Israeli
government who was active in bringing the Jews of Iraq to Israel, decisively
opposed the claim: “I do not refer to the departure of Jews from Arab Countries
as refugees. They came because they wanted to come. As Zionists”. An emotional Ran
Cohen declared in a Knesset debate: “I am informing you: I am not a refugee.” And he added: “I came drawn by the force of
Zionism, drawn by the attracting force of this country and the idea of
redemption. No one will define me as a refugee”.

The opposition was so strong that Orah
Shweitzer, Chairwoman of WOJAC policy committee, asked the Secretariat of the
organization to stop the campaign. She reported that the members of the
Strasbourg community were so offended by the term that they threatened her and
the Leader of the community that if the Sephardi Jews were to be defined as
refugees again they will boycott the meetings. The Foreign Ministry too became fearful
of WOJAC’s energy and advised to stop the campaign based on the argument that
to define the Mizrahis as refugees is a two-edged sword. In the past, Israel
has always maintained a policy of ambiguousness around this complex issue. In
1949, she even rejected a British-Arab offer of a population exchange (Iraqi
Jews vs Palestinian refugees) for fear she would have to care for a “surplus of
refugees” in Israel. The Foreign Ministry called WOJAC divisive and separatist and
demanded that it stops managing itself independently in opposition to the
country’s interests.

The Foreign Ministry finally stopped its fund
transfers to WOJAC. Justice Minister Yossi Beilin went as far as fire Yaakov
Meron from his post at the Arabic Law Department at the Foreign Ministry.Mention must be made of the fact that today,
no serious researcher in Israel or out, has adopted the extreme claims of the
organization. Furthermore, in an attempt to reinforce the Zionist thesis and
assist in Israel’s war on Palestinian nationalism, WOJAC achieved the opposite.
It presented a confused Zionist position on the conflict, angered many Oriental
Jews throughout the world because it represented them as lacking positive
motivation to come to Israel, and mortgaged the interests of Mizrahi Jews
(mainly on the issue of Jewish assets in Arab countries) for what it mistakenly
defined as national interests. The organization didn’t understand that to
define Mizrahi Jews as “refugees” opens a Pandora box and harms every party
involved in the conflict, Arabs and Jews alike.

Refugees and Free Will

Out of a desire to find a magic solution to the
refugee question, the State has again adopted the formula and is promoting it
with great enthusiasm throughout the world. It would be interesting to hear the
Education minister’s position with regard to the narrative presented by the
Jewish representatives in the campaign. Will
the Ministry of Education form a committee to rewrite history textbooks to
match the new Post-Zionist genre? Any honest person whether Zionist or not,
must admit that the analogy between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is
unrealistic.The Palestinian refugees
didn’t want to leave Palestine.In 1948
many Palestinian villages were destroyed. And about 750 000 Palestinians were
expelled from historic Palestine. Those who fled didn’t do so of their own free
will.

On the other hand, the Jews of Arab countries arrived
here due to the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations.
Some arrived of their own will and some
against their will. Part lived at ease and in security in the Arab countries, part
in fear and oppression. The history of the Mizrahi immigration is complex and does
not allow for one single simplistic explanation. A great number has lost a
great amount of properties, and there is no doubt that they must be afforded the
opportunity to file individual claims against Arab countries, which the State
of Israel and WOJAC have blocked to this day. For example, the peace treaty
with Egypt doesn’t allow the filing of individual claims against Egypt. Jewish
Egyptian assets are perceived as being the State of Israel’s assets, and inventory
is important in order to reduce future Palestinian property claims. Another example: during the Gulf war, property
belonging to a Ramat-Gan Jewish-Iraqi family was damaged.In the framework of the claim for damages, a
seasoned lawyer suggested to include the claim for the house that was
confiscated by the Iraqi government in 1952. The Foreign ministry prohibited it,
in keeping with Israeli government policy to hold those assets as part of the inventory
in future negotiations with the Palestinians.

The analogy between the Palestinian refugees and the Oriental
Jews is unrealistic, not to mention criminal and immoral. It causes friction between
Orientals and Palestinians. It insults the dignity of many Orientals and harms chances
for genuine peacemaking. Furthermore, it denotes lack of understanding of the
meaning of the Nakba. The Nakba doesn’t refer only to the events of the war.
The Nakba is essentially the prevention of the return of the expelled to their
homes, their lands and their families in the aftermath of the founding of the
State of Israel. The Nakba is a clear activity of the State of Israel, and not
only a sequel of war chaos.

Israel’s
temptation to use the reduction concept is understandable, but it should not
use diverse scarecrows in order to dismiss the moral and political claims of
the Palestinians. Such manipulation adds insult to injury and increases the
psychological distance between Jews and Palestinians. Even if part of the
Palestinians relinquish implementation of their right of return (as Dr. Halil
Shakaki for example claims) that must not be obtained through ploys of this
sort. Any peace accord must pass through Israeli recognition of past wrongs and
a fair solution proposal. The accounting exercise is turning Israel into a
bookkeeper lacking a political and moral backbone.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

With apologists for the Palestinians busy denying the role and importance of the pro-Nazi Haj Amin al-Husseini in setting off the pogrom in Iraq known as the Farhud, it is as well to remind us that some brave Arabs are prepared to tell the truth. See this MEMRI clip made in 2009.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
When you meet an Iraqi Jew today on the streets of Europe or elsewhere,
he remembers his co-existence with his Muslim or Christian neighbor.

Interviewer:
When did the Iraqi Jews begin to lose that sense of security and tolerance?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
When pan-Arab nationalism grew stronger in Iraq, from the late 1940's
to the early 1950's. The Jew began to be the target of deliberate affronts.
Iraqi Jews are known for their patriotism. They have nothing to do with
Israel. The issue of Israel and Zionism...

Interviewer:
But many of the Jews moved to Israel.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
They were coerced to move.

Interviewer: Who
forced them?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
The wave of pan-Arab nationalism within Iraq.

Interviewer: So
they thought that Israel would be better for them than Iraq?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
They did not go [straight] to Israel. First, they went to European countries,
to Iran... They tried to find an interim region from where they could
later return to Iraq. You shouldn't be surprised if I told you that
the first to study [the possibility] of expelling the Jews from Iraq
was the so-called Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
Yes, Amin Al-Husseini played a significant role, along with German Nazism,
in dragging the Jews out of Iraq.

Interviewer: How?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun:
In the days of the "Farhoud" pogroms, at the end of May and
the beginning of June 1941 – which was called the revolution of Rashid
Ali Al-Kilani... This is well known. The "heroes" of the Farhoud
were Amin Al-Husseini, and some Syrian and Palestinian teachers. I am
not accusing these people of collaborating with Israel, but I am accusing
them of political stupidity.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The truth about Middle Eastern refugees, like every other aspect of the conflict, is far more complex than meets the eye. Israel Hayom columnist Dror Eydar (pictured) explains why:

At the beginning of the week I
had the chance to take part in a rare historic event: the first
official conference on the issue of Jewish refugees, held under the
auspices of Israel's Foreign Ministry in cooperation with the World
Jewish Congress. The international conference was titled "Justice for
Jewish Refugees From Arab Countries."

For the first time in decades, the
call for justice for the Jewish people was once again heard in
Jerusalem. Not just a call for security, or apologetic Israeli discourse
in the face of Palestinian calls for so-called justice, but a clear
call, by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, to bring the issue of Jewish refugees back into
every international arena: the ethical, legal, diplomatic and political
arenas.

As one of the conference participants, former
Canadian Minister of Justice Professor Irwin Cotler, said: “Where there
is no remembrance, there is no truth; where there is no truth, there
will be no justice; where there is no justice, there will be no
reconciliation; and where there is no reconciliation, there will be no
peace – which we all seek.”

Indeed, this is a serious issue that has
been neglected and kept silent for years, in stark contrast with the
Palestinian refugee issue, which has become self evident and universally
recognized in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
Palestinians have become experts at marketing their victimhood to the
world, and thus, the concept of a “just solution” became unilaterally
linked to the Palestinian narrative. But just like every aspect of the
Middle East story, here, too, the truth is far more complex.

With the exception of a few years prior to
World War I, the Arabs living in this region never accepted the Jewish
presence here. They rejected the various partition plans, ranging from
the Peel Commission in 1937, through the 1947 Partition Plan, to the
Oslo Accords and other generous Israeli offers. They were always willing
to accept land, but never to sign a final agreement that would spell
the end of the conflict.

***

In Nov. 1948, the U.N. appointed a task force
to coordinate humanitarian aid work for Palestinian refugees. A short
time later, the U.N.’s Economic Survey Mission issued its recommendation
to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem by resettling them in Arab
countries and integrating them in industry and agriculture there. That
is how the United Nations Relief and Works Agency came about. Obviously,
the plan never came to fruition, because the Arab countries refused to
naturalize the Palestinian refugees. They were tasked with being the
eternal victims — a means to bash Israel.

The Twentieth Century saw millions upon
millions of refugees, products of various wars. Population changes
occurred in many places around the globe. Millions of Sikhs and Hindus,
for example, were displaced from Pakistan to India in the 1950s, and
millions of Muslims, meanwhile, took the opposite route. This population
exchange involved a lot of violence, but ultimately, it happened.
Incidentally, then-Pakistani President Mohammad Ayub Khan visited Cairo
in 1960 and voiced hope during a press conference there that the fact
that his country absorbed some seven million refugees from India would
serve as an example to Arab countries to absorb 750,000 Palestinian
refugees.

But the status of Palestinian refugees is
unlike the status of any other kind of refugee. The U.N. has two
agencies that deal with refugees: the UNHCR which handles all the
refugees in the world, and a refugee agency just for the Palestinians:
UNRWA.

The U.N. also has two different definitions of
refugee status: one is a general definition assigning refugee status to
"people who are outside their countries because of a well-founded fear
of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political
opinion or membership in a particular social group, and who, for
persecution related reasons, are unable or unwilling to return home."
This definition affords refugee status for a limited number of years,
and only to the displaced persons themselves, not their offspring. Under
this definition, refugee status is revoked when a displaced person
settles in, and integrates into another country. But not so when it
comes to Palestinian refugees.

A Palestinian refugee is defined as “anyone
whose normal place of residence was in Mandate Palestine during the
period from June 1, 1946 to May 15, 1948, and who lost both home and
means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." In short,
anyone who lived here for two years prior to the establishment of the
State of Israel is considered a Palestinian refugee who lived here “for
thousands of years” since the biblical Jebusites ... And incidentally,
only Palestinian refugee status can be passed down from generation to
generation. Most of UNRWA’s budget comes from the U.S. and the EU, both
of which are pushing Israel to resume negotiations with the Palestinians
but are simultaneously helping to perpetuate the conflict.

***

Opposite the 600,000 or 700,000 Palestinian
refugees, there are more than 850,000 Jewish refugees who were forcibly
expelled from Arab countries over the establishment of the State of
Israel and its victory in the 1948 War of Independence.

The Arab countries are ultimately responsible
for creating the refugee problem, both the Palestinian refugee problem
that resulted from a war waged by Arab countries against Israel, and the
Jewish refugee problem, by stripping Jews of their citizenships,
confiscating their property, murdering many of them and violently
expelling the rest from the places they had populated for 2,500 years.
All this, some 1,000 years before the rise of Islam.

It is important to get familiar with the
testimonies of Jewish refugees. A good starting point is a website
called The Forgotten Million, operated by the World Organization of Jews
from Arab Countries. These Jews also lived in refugee camps for a time:
the Israeli maabarot (refugee absorption camps). But, as opposed to the
Palestinian refugee camps, the tents in the maabarot eventually became
shacks, which then became permanent housing and ultimately cities.

And so, in stark contrast with the U.N.-fueled
eternal refugee-hood of the Palestinians, these Jewish refugees
integrated into their old-new homeland and were no longer of any
interest to anyone. The term "pogrom" was seen as referring to violence
only European Jews were subjected to. Furthermore, as Cotler mentioned,
in the case of Arab Jews, the violence, the loss of citizenship, the
theft of property and the expulsion reflected the stated policy of the
Arab League, which had suggested a similar course of action against
Jewish nationals back in 1947.

Now that the issue has gotten official state
recognition, Israel’s representatives should raise the issue of Jewish
refugees at every diplomatic event, and demand that justice be done.
More than 150 resolutions having to do with Palestinian refugees have
been adopted by the U.N. Not one has to do with their Jewish
counterparts. It is time to change all that. By the way, U.N. Security
Council Resolution 242 talks about a “just settlement of the refugee
problem” — all refugees, including the Jewish ones.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

With thanks: MichelleMorocco is not immune to the anti-US demonstrations sweeping the Arab world in the wake of the anti-Islam video clip released on Youtube. A Moroccan-Israeli living in Essaouira, Noam Nir, who blogs at The King and I, was 'verbally abused' in an increasingly antisemitic atmosphere. A Salafist demonstration in Agadir. The media and Jewish leadership are playing down their presence in MoroccoNoam Nir writes:

"Earlier this evening I was verbally assaulted by a 15-16 years old boy just
in front of the Atia synagogue in the Medina (old city) of Essaouira. While standing at the door after visiting Haim Aizenkot (Pinto) - who lives in terrible conditions - one of the boys playing football cursed the Jews ("F**K les juifs").
One thing led to another and before long 20 people surrounded us. I engaged
with him. Things calmed down and I left.
Apparently the youngster followed me 200 m, and asked me for forgiveness. Maybe
someone told him something and that is why he followed me, who knows. I looked at him straight into his regretful eyes, smiled, and said: "Musamikha, hiya li kayna" ("Forgiveness is what we have" a local saying for reconciliation after a
quarrel). I tapped him on the shoulder and
shook his hand. Then the boy and his friends turned back to
their neighborhood.

"This local incident could happen only in an antisemitic atmosphere, exactly the kind that followed the video (mistakenly attributed to Jews) that according to Muslims
offended their prophet.

"A wave of antisemitism is sweeping the kingdom. This wave has risen with the help of couple of hundred Salafists who in the past expressed their antisemitic agenda."

Noam Nir goes on to criticise the Moroccan media for failing to correct the impression that a Jew made the anti-Islam video which sparked protests and unrest across the Arab world.

He also criticises the Jewish community leader, Serge Berdugo, for playing down the importance of the resurgent Salafists, who are now leading the Morccan government with the king's blessing. Failing to condemn Salafist antisemitism will only sow the seeds of hatred in future generations.

*Tunisian Salafists threaten imams who visited Tunisian synagogue: Speaking of Salafists, some 7,000 returned to Tunisia from exile in France. 'Moderate' French-based imam Hassen Chalghoumi told MEMRI: "On January 25 this year, I was at the synagogue in Tunis, along with 40 imams of different origins: from Senegal, Mali, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. The Jewish community in Tunis was terrified. They said that it was the first time since the revolution that non-Jews had entered the synagogue. We, as imams, were in peril [because of our visit] there. This was not easy for us. Fortunately, we had police protection."

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)